[Geany] Building a new configuration file from scratch

Lex Trotman elextr at xxxxx
Thu Jan 19 22:14:07 UTC 2012


On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:35 AM,  <thomas.puech at snecma.fr> wrote:
>
> Hello
>
> I am using Red Hat 5, and I would like to use Geany for editing text files
> for a very specific purpose (data files used for defining numerical
> simulations). As such, I need to define a whole new configuration file with
> specific keywords for syntax highlighting as well as code folding or for the
> tags of the symbol list.
>
> As I understood from the documentations of the release 0.20, it is very easy
> to modifiy an existing configuration file, but it seems to be harder to
> build a new configuration file from scratch and include it in the Geany
> interface (not in place of an existing one, but as a new one added to the
> available language choices).
>
> Please could you tell me if this is feasible, and if so, how ?

I'm presuming that you mant syntax highlighting.  To do that you need
to have more than just the filetype file.  How much depends on your
target language:

1. you need lexical analyser code in the Scintilla editing widget
Geany uses and a mapping in sciwrappers.h from the states the lexer
determines to the style names that are used in filetype files

2. you need to add a new filetype to Geany in filetypes.c and add the
extensions to filetypes.extensions

3. you need a filetypes file

But there are shortcuts

1. if you can use the lexer from a language already in Geany then you
only need a custom filetype, see the manual.

2. if you can use a lexer already in scintilla but not included in
Geany you only need the wrappers and filetypes.c additions.  Follow
the examples of existing languages.

Otherwise you need to write the C++ code for the lexer and add it to
Scintilla first.

Its all possible, but how much work depends on the level you need.

Cheers
Lex



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